


To Burn

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beauxbatons, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Veela, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 08:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11331903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Therese’s hair cores Apolline’s wand, and the wands of her daughters.





	To Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malapropism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/gifts).



“Mama,” she had asked when she was six years old. “Where are we going?”

Therese had pressed a kiss to her daughter’s hair, pulled her close to balance her on her hip as they travelled through the woods. “We are going,” she had said, “To try to burn the wizard out of you.”

 

* * *

 

They had travelled almost until dawn and as the sun’s light began to touch the treetops they arrived in a clearing filled with Mama’s cousins and sisters. There was even a  _ male _ Veela, there, a man so astoundingly, proudly beautiful that Apolline had thought of the swans that ate from her mother’s hands, powerful wings still pricked up.

Apolline’s aunts had flocked to Therese, their fire sparking from their fingertips at the sight of the bruises on her skin.

“I come with my daughter,” Therese had said. “We come to try to burn the wizard from her.”

 

* * *

 

Years later Apolline can still remember the flames of the other Veela burning at her feet, at her skin, forcing her to transform lest she be burned.

“You must last one day,” her mother had promised. “One day and then you will be nothing but Veela and we will  _ never _ have to go back. One day burning, my heart, can you last that for me?” Despite the flames at her fingertips Apolline’s mother’s eyes had been wet. She remembers this so clearly.

Apolline, all of six years old, had nodded.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, now, she will run her fingers over the burns on her arms. It is a rare thing for her to do - even sleeping she hides these scars beneath robes, even when she lays with her husband, whom she adores as much as her children, she has hidden them.

He never pushed her on that. It was how she knew he was the right one.

 

* * *

 

Apolline never had the wizard burned out of her. In the penultimate hour her Papa had torn into the clearing, wand in hand, and cast some unspeakable curse at her mother.

The flames faded. Therese fell.

In a moment they had been gone from the grove.

 

* * *

 

“Mama!” Apolline had screamed.  _ “Mama!” _

The aunt holding her - Jeanette - had held her close, whispered into her hair, “Therese is gone, my heart. She is gone.”

Apolline had not stopped crying for hours.

 

* * *

 

Therese’s hair cores Apolline’s wand, and the wands of her daughters. Sebastiane, the male Veela, had risked himself to fetch back Therese’s body and as the aunts and cousins had laid her out they had combed out her hair, collected every fallen strand.

“To take a Veela’s hair in life,” Sebastiane had told her, “Is always a risk. But if it is given in death-” He had trailed off, looked at the clock on the wall. “My sister’s hair,” he had said, “Will core your wand and your daughter’s wands, and their daughter’s wands until your line is extinguished or her hair runs out. She knew what she risked to come to us, and what she risked in staying. She made her choice.”

 

* * *

 

Apolline had been raised by her aunts and her uncle. Taught how to hide her Veela-ness with the same spells Sebastiane used, taught how to shift at a moment’s notice even though it exhausted her now as it never had before. Taught how and where to throw a fireball and how to recognise those people who might become like her father.

“And if,” Aunt Claude had said, “You see your father, you call your fire and you call us.”

She had not seen her father again until her wedding day.

* * *

Letters had arrived the first day she had spent at Beauxbatons. Three from home - Aunt Jeanette and Aunt Claude shared one, and the Cousins another, and Sebastiane had sent the third, all full of questions and kindness and well-meant advice. 

There was a fourth letter, in a hand that made something itch in the back of her mind.

_ Dearest Apolline, _

It had read. 

_ Dear, my daughter- _

Apolline thrust the letter away from her, forced fire out of her fingertips and burned the letter to ash.

_ Jeanette, _ she wrote back at breakfast, ignoring the food.  _ Claude, Antoinette, Delphine, Simone, Sebastiane. _

_ He wrote a letter to me. _

 

* * *

 

There were other letters, while she was at school, but after the first she received no more. The Aunts had told her, when she came home, “We had them place the same spells to protect you as lie on the house. So your father cannot talk to you.”

She was grateful for it.

She did not want to end up like her mother: fire gone to ash, body cold in the ground, six feet under.

She could not let her mother’s sacrifice be for nothing.

 

* * *

 

She remembers how easily magic had come to her at school, flowing through her arms and down her wand, each movement like the dances of her aunts and cousins. Transforming, now, hurt, took more effort than it ever had, and she wonders if she had strained her ability when they had tried to burn the wizard from her, like an elastic band, stretched so far it was almost in a new shape before pinging back to it’s original form.

Now, when she stretches, she gets closer and closer to breaking.

She had cast with beauty, precise and elegant, movements a dance, fire trailing from her fingertips when she duelled. 

“You could be an Auror,” the Defence Magester had told her, “with how well you cast.”

She considered it, but she had had enough of fire and violence after all her youth. Seen too many who had fought over her, tried to fight  _ for _ her, though she has always been able to fight her own battles and cared nothing for those who would try to win her affection.

Her affection had always gone - always will go - to her  _ friends, _ to those who see her for who she is, to those who are  _ worthy. _ Her affection went to Bernadette and Rosa and Amara and Francois and Henri. Those who were not lured in by beauty but by intelligence, by those who sought to be her friend because they were friendly, and had similar interests.

Those who truly wished to be her friend, and did not hope to bed her.

 

* * *

 

“No,” she had said when Henri had tried to move her sleeve and his hand dropped immediately, fingers gently tangling with hers. 

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

And he had said no more, just waited for her to calm.

“I have burns,” she said later, months later, years. She gestured to her arms. “My father, he was cruel to my mother. So we left, and we found her cousins and her sisters and her brother. And together they tried to burn the wizard from me.”

Henri’s face is aghast. 

“If I was Veela, only Veela, then it would be easier to stay far from my father. I had to stay transformed for a day, a whole day, as they burned me to make sure I stayed transformed, so everything wizard was forced away.”

His expression turns to a frown.

“In the last hour of it, Father arrived. He killed Mama. The aunts, they took me and left. They raised me. I have not seen my father since.”

Henri did not say  _ He may have changed, in all these years. _ Her own mind whispered that.

“If you would like,” she says softly, “I will owl him, and ask if he will be there for our wedding.”

Henri’s thumb brushed her knuckles, then his lips.

“Only,” he said, eyes fixed on hers. “If you wish it so.”

 

* * *

 

_ Dear Victor, my father, _

_ We have not spoken in many years, not since Mother and I left. I can only hope you understand why we did so. _

_ I write to tell you that I am getting married. Henri is not opposed to meeting you, and my aunts have sworn they will not hurt you if you do not try to hurt any of us. _

_ Respond, Father, or do not, but know that this is your final chance to see your daughter, _

_ Regards, _

_ Apolline of the Veela of Lyon. _

 

* * *

 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The idea of burning the human out of Apolline is from two different myths, one Greek and one Egyptian. In each a goddess (Demeter/Ceres and Isis respectively) acts as a nanny or nursemaid for a prince when one a search (for Persephone and for the missing parts of Osiris respectively) and decide to deign to make the prince more powerful and immortal by burning the humanity and mortality out of them, rendering them a god. In both cases the process is halted short of succeeding when the Queen discovers. Thus, here the Veela try to force Apolline's magic to turn entirely towards the Veela side of things, eradicating (burning out) the wixen side of her, but due to her father's interference do not succeed.
> 
> The term "Magester" is my own, a mix of Mage and Magister intended to be a gender neutral way of indicating a wix to be a master of the subject.
> 
> Please leave comments!


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